Custom Curtains

I am linking up today with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It. 

After I post this Monday Made It, I am off with my daughters to see what we can get into for my last day of summer break!!  

There really are few-- if any-- tasks that are more fun than moving. I mean, possibly visiting the doctor for your annual exam, or being audited by the IRS-- but really-- there isn't much that could top the list. We moved this summer, and for weeks leading up to the move and weeks following the move, our lives were totally consumed with moving in some form or fashion-- from actually finding the house in the first place to purging and packing to unpacking and organizing....on and on it went.

To be fair, there are some bright points involved in a big move though-- and decorating is definitely one of them-- IF you aren't like me and too overwhelmed or exhausted by said move to even think about one single design element. I think my problem is that when I move, I want to wave a wand and have it all done...yesterday. And when I say, "done," I mean that I want all boxes unpacked and broken down, every corner cleaned, pictures hung on the walls and the family lounging together watching a movie or playing games like the move never even happened. Unrealistic expectations? Totally.

So, it has been about six weeks now that we have been in our "new" house. I joke that we should hide the stones since we now live in a glass house with lots of large windows. We love the windows, of course, but prior to owning this home, I had never furnished my own window treatments. I decided right away to go with panel curtains to minimize the view obstruction. But, after a lot of searching, I just didn't see anything that I would want to look at day in and day out for the next few years. My teenage daughter, who is taking fashion classes in high school, rescued me from indecision when she volunteered to MAKE THE CURTAINS FOR US. Can you visualize me buying fabric before she knew what hit her?  'Cause that is exactly what happened! Over the next few weeks, I learned A LOT about sewing from her. The first challenge of this project was to measure and cut the fabric. We were dealing with a window that is 100 inches in length and 142 inches in width. This step sounds simple enough, but it was a little nerve-wracking because of the pattern I chose:

We knew that we had to cut the fabric just right or the pattern would not line up on the finished panels...and that would be a drapery atrocity. So, we measured and pinned and measured and pinned again...and then cut the fabric. We decided to make three panels, and cut one panel in half, so we would end up with a panel and a half on each side of the window when the curtains were pushed open.

The next step involved a lot of measuring and ironing. My daughter loves to sew, but she hates the measuring and ironing. Surprise, surprise. Suffice it to say that I watched a lot of Netflix while I was doing all of this measuring and ironing. Grin. Along the length of the panels, I measured and pressed a seam that was 2.5 inches, then opened it, folded and pressed another half inch, and folded it again on the original pressed line to create a seam. I pinned the fabric at the top, the bottom, and about every foot or two in between the top and bottom. For the width of the panels, I followed the same process only the starting seam was 1.5 inches. For the panel that we cut in half, I pressed the seam at 1.25 inches for the length (half the thickness that I measured for the full panel). And then, my daughter worked her magic on the sewing machine!

Because the window is so wide, I was worried about finding hardware that would accommodate the width of the window as well as accommodate the confines of my checkbook. Ikea to the rescue!! Meet my Swedish friends: Betydlig, Hugad, Syrlig and Blast.

As my husband drilled Betydlig and Hugad in their respective spaces on the wall, my daughter and I spread the panels out for a moment of truth: Would the crazy pattern actually line up as we had hoped? Was my measurement of all the seams accurate and my ironing precise???? This is what we found, and we were pretty dog-gone pleased:

We attached the Syrlig clip rings to the tops of our curtains and popped the Blast fixtures on the ends. Here is the "finished" product:

Truthfully, the project is not finished because I want to take the curtains down and add additional Syrlig clips to the top. And, in retrospect, I wish that we had not divided the middle panel in half because it results in too many gaps between the panels when they are closed. If I were to do this project again, I would make four full panels and push two panels to each side of the window. My perfectionist daughter is not happy with the results, and she is trying to determine a proper solution. I am okay with the results because when the curtains are open (which they most always are), they look great. The problem of gaps between the panels is only apparent when the curtains are closed taut. One possible solution would be to use these curtains in another room of the house where the window is not quite as wide. Another solution would be to eliminate the half panels and sew two full panels as replacements....ugg, but that's a lot of work and I am just not sure that we are up to it since the start of school is imminent.

Clearly, this was my first attempt at anything of this magnitude, so I am definitely a novice in every sense of the word. I am sure that many of you have much more experience and can help me solve this problem!! What are your thoughts?